1. Technical Field
The present principles relate to corkscrews. More particularly, it relates a self-centering and self-gripping corkscrew.
2. Related Art
Corkscrews come in many different shapes and sizes. Among the most common of corkscrews is a “winged” corkscrew where the arms or handles move in conjunction with the worm as it engages the cork. These winged corkscrews have a bottom opening that the user places on the corked bottle and then manually engages the knob to rotate the worm into the cork. As the worm proceeds into the cork, the winged arms or handles rise upward. Downward pressure on the handles causes the ledge in the bottom opening to contact the top of the bottle and thereby extract the cork from the same.
Several drawbacks with known winged corkscrew designs exist. One of which is that the user must hold the device in engagement with the top of the bottle while simultaneously rotating the worm using the knob. This is primarily because the bottom opening is sized to receive most any size bottle and remains loose around the neck of the bottle until the worm engages the cork. However, those of ordinary skill in the art will also appreciate that the loose bottom receiving opening more often than not causes the worm to engage the cork “off-center” from the same. This results in a crooked engagement with the cork, and sometimes even causes the worm to breach a side of the cork, thus creating cork pieces that can fall into the bottle.
The self-centering and griping corkscrew of the present principles overcomes all the shortfalls of known winged corkscrew designs.